


Pawn to a Queen

by HeartlessMemo



Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Dracula (TV 2020), Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: Dracula's "mind palace", Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Spoilers, Vampire/Victim, actually blood palace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:40:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22654873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeartlessMemo/pseuds/HeartlessMemo
Summary: One-shot. Agatha's spirit lives on in the place where Dracula keeps all of his victims. She keeps him company during the long years of sleep beneath the ocean's surface. A deeper look at Agatha's experience of what I lovingly refer to as "Dracula's Blood Palace." Takes place during episode 2, Blood Vessel, and episode 3, The Dark Compass. Spoilers for both.
Relationships: Dracula & Agatha Van Helsing, Dracula/Agatha Van Helsing
Comments: 19
Kudos: 116





	Pawn to a Queen

**Author's Note:**

> This little fic is my love note to Dracula/Agatha. I absolutely loved the way their relationship is developed throughout the course of the show and I wanted to pay homage and expand upon it. Thank you very much for reading!

_“When did I lose so many pieces? I was winning…”_ **  
**

_“No, you’ve been losing from the start.”_

Agatha. Quick-witted, sharp-tongued, unflappable Agatha. She feels a fog of confusion dulling her senses and slowing her thoughts. Finding words to respond to her leering, arrogant opponent is like swimming through molasses. Her tongue is heavy, her reflexes slow, a shiver crawls up her spine. Her eyes dance over the chess board but the pieces blur together, indistinguishable. 

The Count sits back in his chair, cradling the goblet of hot, thick nectar in his hands and regarding Agatha with a look of mingled affection and amusement. How he loves to watch his pets work it all out. It’s adorable, seeing their little human minds fit the puzzle pieces together. Agatha, though, is his finest conquest. So much intelligence, passion, wit, humor. She really is a delicacy and he’s so pleased he hasn’t rushed her. But time is almost up. All good things must end.

He guides her gently towards the realization. Answering her stammered questions and watching as she paces, hands trembling and eyes alight in suspicion and fear. 

_“Are you drinking my blood?”_

She’s worked herself up to the question, knowing the answer but still fearing to hear it spoken aloud. _Poor Agatha._ She spent her entire life searching for her God, crying out in prayer for intellectual proof of His existence. And now just as she’s found Him she’s torn away by a demon. Trapped in the beast’s domain and given a cruel mockery of the eternal life she was promised by the Church. It’s enough to make one weep. Or laugh.

Dracula can’t help himself, he stands up and stalks forward invading her personal space, looming over her and mocking her. He draws a finger dripping with her blood to his lips and sucks the sweet essence before her horrified eyes.

***

He comes back gradually to himself, perched over the nun’s weak body and lovingly lapping the spilled blood from her neck. _Oh, Agatha_ , he muses nuzzling her pale cheek. _If things were different I’d make you my bride. And how magnificent you’d be._

He hears footsteps and voices coming from below deck. _Time for a show._

***

Dracula doesn’t feel the cold. He watches the flickering light of the burning ship as his body is swallowed up by the frigid waters. He turns his head and catches sight of a dark shape sinking below him. The last box of Transylvanian earth. His salvation. He moves through the water and reaches the box just as it hits the ocean floor creating a cloud of sand. As he opens the lid he feels a shiver on the back of his neck and looks up instinctively. _She’s gorgeous._ Dark tresses floating around her head like a halo, her face serene in peaceful sleep. Agatha’s body takes longer to sink to the bottom and he knows that the tide and the natural process of decay will not leave her undisturbed for long. Still, he likes that she will rest here beneath the waters with him. He watches her body settle into the sand beside the box. He does regret that there hadn’t been time to work on her, to make her like him. But, after all, death is not a parting for Dracula and his victims. He’ll be seeing her again soon.

He takes one last look at Agatha’s face, peaceful in death as he lowers himself into the box and moves to close the lid. His lips quirk in a smile as he goes to his rest.

_Check mate, sweet Agatha._

***

There’s a fire crackling cheerfully in the hearth. The room is cozy, lined with shelves full of books in more languages than Agatha has dreamed of. She doesn’t remember how she got here. This should trouble her but she finds it doesn’t. She walks along the walls of overflowing shelves, running her fingertips along the spines and finally choosing a volume to take with her to the plush chair before the fire. She settles into the seat with her feet propped up on a low ottoman and the book nestled in her lap. There are two chairs placed in front of the hearth. Agatha looks over at the empty seat with furrowed brows, her mind grasping for a name, something she’s forgotten. At the sound of his voice everything comes rushing back and her spine straightens in alarm.

“Hello, Agatha,” Dracula’s voice lilts in a singsong tone as he enters the room from some unseen door and takes the other seat by the fire. “This is rather nice, isn’t it? To finally rest?”

She remembers _everything._ How Dracula attempted to frame her for the murders he’d committed. The desperate attempts to protect the remaining crew and passengers from him. Feeling at the last that she’d finally beat him. But no. She tastes the sour tang of failure and a miserable frown fills her face.

“You’ve killed me,” she states, struggling to sound matter-of-fact but hearing the tremor in her own voice that betrays her emotion.

Dracula shrugs his shoulders and steeples his clawed hands before his face, regarding her with a gimlet stare.

“It would appear so,” he sighs and then smiles at the memory, “And what a pretty corpse you made, Agatha, let me tell you.”

“Spare me,” she hisses with iron beneath her brittle voice. She stares into the fire for a long moment, thoughts spinning incoherently in her head. Or…or is it Count Dracula’s head? Does Agatha still exist as her own being or does every part of her belong to him now? 

“Why?” she asks, panicked desperation in her voice. “Why am I still here?”

Dracula quirks his head and regards her with a pitying look.

“It’s not so bad here, is it, Agatha? I’ve tried to make it pleasant for you,” he gestures at the room around them. “You have every book I’ve ever read. And look, behind you you’ll find a workshop where you can continue your studies.”

Agatha swivels to look over her shoulder and, indeed, where before there had been a solid wall of books now there is a little alcove with a workbench, notebooks, beakers, Bunsen burners and racks of specimen jars. She turns back to him, her expression stony. She will not allow him to feel as though he is being somehow magnanimous by giving her a pleasant prison.

She whispers her next words with fury, “And this is where my soul is to reside? Not with my Lord but with my murderer?”

Dracula furrows his brows in a mockery of sympathy, “I did tell you, Agatha, that I would carry you in my veins into the new world. Did I not? You’ll live with me, be a part of me, forever. But it needn’t be a torture for you.”

Agatha takes a long, shaky breath. She’s determined not to show him the depth of her despair at those words.

“Why? Why have you made this place for me? Why care for my comfort?”

“Surely, after all we’ve been through… You didn’t think I’d let you suffer, Agatha?”

***

How long has she been here? There’s no way of measuring time in this place. It seems to act differently here than it did in the mortal realm. Agatha might choose a book to read, sit down for a moment in the warmth of the fire, and then rise later having finished the book with no memory of the time passing. On other occasions it feels as though she spends days at a time pacing the room in tight circles. Dracula responds to these bouts of anxiety and restlessness from her. He always appears shortly after her despair takes hold. She came to terms long ago with the fact that his presence has become a comfort to her. 

“Agatha, darling,” he whispers, grasping her shoulders in his strong hands and arresting her momentum in mid-stride. She’s in the midst of a nervous episode. He frowns down at her and rubs his palms along her upper arms. He’s found that his touch, his voice, offers comfort to her in these times. For all he delights in possessing her soul, he doesn’t wish for her to be restless, disturbed in this manner. “What’s bothering my brilliant Agatha today?”

“How long? Count Dracula, how long have I been here?” she straightens her spine and meets his eyes with the fiery bravery that first drew him to her.

He guides her to the armchairs with a hand on the small of her back and they take their usual seats before the fire. 

“What does it matter, darling?” he argues. “Counting the hours of an eternal life will only lead you to despair.”

Agatha ignores his pleading tone and carries on, “I wish to know how long it has been since my death. Excuse me, since my murder.”

Dracula rolls his eyes at her, “A little dramatic, don’t you think? Aren’t we friends now, finally?”

Agatha knows he has a point. They’ve shared hours of contented silence seated before the fire, days of deep conversation discussing the books she’s read. Dracula has held her as she sobbed in despair and he’s made her laugh telling the story of his life in the dry, sardonic tone that perfectly matches her sense of humor. There are days at a time when she can forget who he is, what he is. Not today.

“I wish to know,” she replies simply.

Dracula sighs and rubs a hand over his brow, “I’m…not sure.”

“What do you mean you are not sure?”

Dracula holds her gaze for a long moment. His dark eyes gleam unnaturally in the firelight, orbs of silver like a wolf’s eyes shining in the dark forest. A predator’s eyes.

“I’ve been…asleep,” he finally answers.

“What?”

“When I leave this place and return to my body I can feel the water on my skin, the packed earth beneath my back. I am still underwater, Agatha. Resting in the place you felled me.”

She feels a flash of victory but it’s short-lived.

“But…you live, still,” she states.

Dracula smiles wickedly, “Oh yes, darling. And I will walk again. It’s only a matter of…time.”

***

She feels the difference right away although she doesn’t understand the significance at first. Before, even when his form wasn’t present in the room with her, she could still feel his spirit very close by. When Dracula comes awake once more into his physical body, his presence, his spirit, feels more remote to Agatha. There’s still a connection between them but it’s stretched over a greater distance. 

It’s time to return to work. She enters the workshop and begins pouring over her old notebooks, cross referencing every fact, every legend, every story about Count Dracula and his powers. As she works she feels echoes of his thoughts and emotions sweep over her. The frenzied lust that signals his first feeding in a century, the sense of wonder he feels at the new age in which he’s found himself, the calculation of a master predator and manipulator. 

He returns to her when he sleeps. He lays his body down on the sensual silk sheets of his new bed, protected from the sun’s burning rays in the stark, modern apartment that Renfield assisted him in obtaining. He closes his eyes and seeks her out. _Agatha._

He finds her tinkering in her laboratory, more animated and determined than he’s seen her in ages. 

“What are you up to, dear?” he murmurs as he saunters into the room with more of the predator in his step than she’s seen in a long time.

“What does it look like, Count Dracula? I’m working, once more, to foil your evil schemes.”

Dracula’s eyes light in amusement at her words and he leans over to peer down at the notebooks over her shoulder, “Charming. I’m glad to see you’re so lively. I wonder if the blood feeds you as well….?”

Agatha cringes at the thought and steps away from him, snapping the notebook shut and hugging it to her chest.

“Not for long I hope. I’ve been dead and trapped in this purgatory long enough. I’m ready to sleep. You’ve fed from one of my descendants. I can feel her, taste her just as you have. And I can help her stop you once and for all.”

Dracula takes a playful step backward as if her words have physically struck him, “Well, by all means, Agatha I wouldn’t have it any other way. My darling antagonist.”

She narrows her eyes at him and turns back to her work.

***

When the answer comes it is divine in its simplicity. She hears it as a voice inside of her, the voice of God speaking the words, _He fears only death._

He lives eternally in shame. A warrior whose father, brothers, and countrymen all gave their lives on the glorious battlefield. But he is too cowardly, too terrified by the hereafter to release his stranglehold on life. So he feeds on the lives of others, stealing their souls so that he may cling to life.

She watches through dear Zoe’s eyes as Count Dracula flinches from the sunlight blazing in through the ostentatious window of his apartment. She sees the moment he realizes that the light cannot hurt him. Watches the existential confusion settle on his face. Pain wracks her form, but she forces this body to stand upright. She has sent Zoe away, giving her this last gift of taking her pain and suffering away and enduring it for her. Dracula’s gaze shifts to her as her breath wavers in just the smallest indication of the overwhelming physical struggle.

“You’re in pain,” he states, his voice laced with concern and she recalls the years they spent together in the liminal space of his psyche. His arms around her, soothing her in her despair. They are adversaries, yes. But partners in the end, it seems.

She gathers her self-control and responds, “I am equal to it.”

Agatha nearly weeps when Count Dracula finally steps into the light, allowing himself to bathe in the warmth he’s been denied for more than five hundred years. His face goes slack in wonder and she sees a glimpse of the boy he might once have been. It’s a beautiful sight for her last, she thinks as she collapses into the leather chair.

If she dies in this body, will she finally be at peace? Will she finally return to the kingdom of her Lord?

Orange light glows on the backs of her eyelids. Agatha opens her eyes to a world of pulsing, molten light. Flames lick at her skin but do not burn. Dracula is with her and instead of feeling repulsed or betrayed she feels a soaring joy that they are together at the end. He holds her in his arms, laying fierce kisses to her naked skin and rocking against her in an ancient, primal dance that she’d forsaken in life. She arches against him, returning his kisses, his touches. She thinks if she’d known it could be like this she might not have followed the path of a nun.

“This isn’t real,” she murmurs against his lips. It’s a dream. He’s drinking my blood. But that would mean…

_“After all this time… did you think I’d let it hurt?”_

His hushed words ring between them, vibrating along the bond they share and touching a place deep inside Agatha. She feels his care, his love. Indeed, after all this time, the monster…the man is capable of love.

“Aren’t you afraid?” she whispers, their motions are slowing and she feels both of them beginning to fade into the flames.

“Yes,” he answers in a shaky breath. “Will you hold my hand?”

“Of course,” she responds. She takes his hand in hers and they walk away together.

The End


End file.
